This Tips & Techniques section is designed to help you understand many of the concepts being used to create the photos you are following in our fall colors coverage.

Many readers have emailed their appreciation of the exposure details for each of the photos on the website galleries. But, I thought taking it a step further and offering technical tips for making better foliage photos would ultimately help you sharpen your skills to take better photographs and have more fun on your trip.

Photography is a great hobby but can appear overwhelming to most beginning photographers. Not only are we confronted by the complexities of a new camera but we're also presented with the question of just exactly what should we be taking pictures of! For every scene in front of us there is another scene behind us.

Cropping out all the unnecessary clutter in a scene, moving around and selecting a comfortable framing is called composition. Deciding how big you want a background subject in relationship to a foreground subject in the frame is called perspective management. And, choosing the time of day to shoot the picture is called lighting.

These are all concepts every photographer struggles with in the beginning. As time passes, along with sufficient experience in the field, most of us begin to learn what makes one photograph better than another and begin applying our individual style.

I've broken these technical tips down into five categories:

Camera Controls - deals with f-stops, shutter speeds, depth-of-field etc.

Composition - deals with the placement of the various compositional elements within the frame of a photograph for a more pleasing effect.

Filters - covers the several filters I use to create the effects in many of the photos on the site.

Lighting - covers the concepts you need to master to make fall color photos that snap.

Accessories - covers tools you might find useful in your pursuit of the perfect photo.

Getting good fall color photos isn't as easy as some might imagine. If you will work at developing the skills presented here, you will increase the number of successful photos you end up with at the end of the trip. Isn't that why you went in the first place?

Welcome to the wonderful world of fall foliage photography.

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